The popular web hosting provider MediaTemple has posted a security advisory on a huge security breach they just had.

Unfortunately, MediaTemple was slow to act on this intrusion, and still is not admitting to customers the extent of the security breach.

My understanding of the incident, (as also blogged here and here), is that someone got ahold of many of the admin passwords for Grid Service (GS) accounts and thus had full SSH and FTP access to such accounts. This was noticed some time after it happened, when malicious scripts started popping up on people's accounts.

Read more below...
Continue reading "MediaTemple gets hacked, doesn't fess up to customers."

I recently stumbled upon Spoke.com when I noticed they had a "profile" about me published online. It contained incorrect information about me and my employment.

I didn't see a way on the site to delete the information, so I sent them a message requesting deletion. In reply, I received a canned response that ignored my request. Such an easily-gamed system should really include a method to delete bad information.

A little more searching revealed that this company is evil. Evil as in not making the world a better place. I'm not the first one to come to this conclusion, either.

spoke.com review, another spoke.com review, an example of someone using spoke.com to slander someone.

As I understand it, their business model is to install spyware on people's computer which downloads email (Outlook) address books to their databases. They later "monetize" this info, by posting it online or, presumably, selling it.

How would the people at Spoke felt if others published inaccurate information about them online? They claim all the information is publicly available. Why then, would need to be using spyware to populate their databases?

Someone needs to make a site dedicated to all the people who work at spoke and populate it with publicly available information. Next, a bunch of people can link to these profiles so Google ranks our site first.

Now, if we were to be lazy about updating their information, or to accidentally post info about the wrong John Smith, our work will be done. They will have a taste of what it is like to have stale or outright incorrect information published about them online.

Keep reading below for names of the current board and management at Spoke...



Continue reading "Spoke.com is Evil"

Brewing a hyper-caffeinated stout beer: Part 2

(see part 1 here)

In the second of our three part series on brewing a high-caffeine coffee stout, we strain our cold water coffee extract, and then boil the wort.



Stay tuned for part three, along with a full written recipe and instructions how to homebrew this Death by Coffee Stout.

Brewing a hyper caffeinated stout beer: Part 1
This is part one of a series of posts on making a very caffeinated, dark beer, Death By Coffee Stout. In part one, I prepare 2.5 gallons of cold water coffee extract.



Tomorrow, I will strain out the extract, and mix it with my stout beer wort (malt, hops, etc.) and then yeast to start fermenting this mad concoction.

Read part two next.

Paul Binnings of Carson City, NV recently passed away. He was a life-long jazz musician, (my) grandfather, and all around cool guy.

How do I feel about it? Angry. I'm angry because I have been meaning to spend time with Paul and catch up. Next time I'm in Nevada, I'd tell myself. I wanted to have a long chat with him about the history of Jazz in the US. I'm not sure he knows how much I respected and looked up to him. Bummer.

In a sad attempt to regain some pieces of Paul, I've been looking on the Internet for some history of his career. There isn't much out there, since the Internet is so new. Here are some links, which are a work in progress...

Paul Binnings the Jazz Musician

• Paul Binnings on JazzIndex, a swiss Jazz history site.
• Erika Paul's site, who was in a Jazz Trio with Paul more recently.
• Paul Binnings on ArtistDirect.

Other Stuff

• The Bahá'í Faith, a unifying religion Paul was a part of (more info).

Keep reading for a video and pictures from the funeral.
Continue reading "Paul Binnings, RIP"

Intrade is an online futures market where people can speculate on things like "Is Britney going back into rehab this year", or "Who will be elected the US president?". Since there are many people, putting their money where their mouth is, it is a fairly accurate predictor of events.

Via BoingBoing Gadgets.

PORTLAND, OR - Aug 12, 2008. Researchers at the Fabbri Baby Institute today released the results of their week-long study of input and output behavior of newborn infants. The scientists made a surprising discovery when one of their test subjects, baby Adria, produced some mass in her test diaper while simultaneously consuming test milk.

We've discovered that infants, in general, are often born with the amazing ability to consume food, and at the same time expell waste. This was determined by our elite supercomputers, when their algorithms detected simultaneous "slurp" and "poot-ra-toot-poot" sound patterns in a recording of the test subject.

Researchers explained that this phenonoma of being able to input and output at the same time is known as being "full duplex".

We've known about this behavior in the past, but only in the context of computer networks, where having the ability to input and output at the same time is known as "full duplex".

Identify Full Duplex Infants

Scientists are urging parents of full-duplex babies to appropriately label their children by purchasing and using official "full duplex" baby clothes, available below.



Order here.

Anyone who has gotten into brewing beer at home has probably read the bible on the subject The New Complete Joy of Home Brewing by Charlie Papazian.

In the book, Charlie introduces a new phrase "Relax, don't worry, have a homebrew". He even has a bumpersticker on his glass carboy (used to ferment the beer):



I've recreated this now-retro bumper sticker and you can buy one here.

Today I was trying to find out which compact refrigerators are the most energy efficient. After some searching, I ended up at the Energy Star site, where they have a spreadsheet listing Energy Star fridges along with how much power they use and how big they are.

I took this spreadsheet and sorted it by kilowatt-hours (kWh), so the fridges at the top use the least energy. Surprisingly, the most efficient fridge listed is not a compact fridge but a decent sized model by Sun Frost. The two most efficient compact fridges were the Samsung SKR1373* and the MicroFridge MHRA-4E.

You can download my sorted spreadsheet as a PDF here.

This skit is an oldie but a goodie.

See the live videos. Buy the album today.

The Helio Sequence, from my very own Portland, OR, released
Keep Your Eyes Ahead early in 2008 and it has been rocking me since. I can't say enough good things about this album.

Rating: 5/5

Below are some recent live videos of some of my favorite songs off this album, along with links to buy the album below:

The Captive Mind


Buy Keep Your Eyes Ahead on Amazon.com. I bought the downloadable mp3 album which sounds excellent (256Kbps, the CD was out of stock and I didn't want to wait).


More videos after the jump...


Continue reading "Helio Sequence: Keep Your Eyes Ahead"

Not only have these people made a video about rescuing poor abandonded shopping carts like they are majestic wild beasts, but they've made a whole website about it, and bought online advertising to promote it. What pointless sillyness. Bravo.

This fake George Carlin chain email serves as a popular example of false information that is passed in chain emails for years. I even see people quoting it in their blogs.

I find my self continually hitting Reply All to chain emails people forward to me. I do this to explain that the story people are passing around is a lie, a con, a chain letter.

Continue reading "Chain Emails are all B.S., e.g. George Carlin"